Ben Hecht Biography & Works
431 Fifth Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
fax: 202 547 0132
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Ben Hecht in New York
-"Wandering on Broadway and in the Loop after work . . . their hearts beat faster at the vision of their monuments. Their eyes feel a sensation of ocular pride and tenderness."
------Ben Hecht, "In Behalf of Art," in ART & ARCHITECTURE ON 1001 AFTERNOONS. Snickersnee 2002
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Ben Hecht must have felt right at home when he beat a bitter retreat from his beloved Chicago to his native New York. Here he could savor Chicago architect Daniel Burnham's 1902 Flatiron Building, celebrating over 100 years at 23rd and Broadway. Hecht became fascinated by Chicago's skyscrapers, when they were the highest ones and followed the trend to New York in the soaring Twenties. In the 1940s the RCA Building and the Empire State Building were among the New York subjects of his stories.
Hecht was born in New York on February 28, 1894 to immigrant Jewish parents from southern Russia. After a childhood in Chicago, middle school and high school in Racine, Wisconsin and salad days as a journalist in Chicago 1910-1925, he returned to New York with his mistress Rose Caylor, who became his second and enduring wife. They lived for a time in an apartment on the Lower East Side, then on Beekman Place before buying a house on the Hudson in Nyack (seen right) a location also chosen by Hecht's collaborators Charles MacArthur
and Kurt Weill. Ben & Rose later moved to an apartment in Central Park West near the Tavern on the Green. Hecht's early film writing for New York Paramount reminds us that the American movie industry started in New York, not Hollywood. His 1930s collaborations with Charles MacArthur, among them Design for Living, Crime without Passion and Soak the Rich, were produced by the raucus pair at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Queens. While his cinematic techniques originated in silent film artistry and respect for
extraordinary camera work (he partnered with Lee Garmes) it was the stage that inspired him; thus he thought of himself always as a scenarist or playwright. Hecht's Broadway plays varied in commercial success, his Front Page hit with MacArthur dominating his Broadway career. Three of his plays of the World War II era championed causes of interventionism (Fun to Be Free) and rescue of Holocaust victims (We Will Never Die). Marlon Brando fans will find an early siting in Hecht's post World War II play A Flag Is Born, in which he worked with the prominent Adler theater family.
In 1940 Hecht conspired with George Grosz to create an illustrated anthology "1001 Afternoons in New York," a selection of pieces published originally in PM, Manhattan's anti-isolationist tabloid. Hecht's pioneering live television talk show of the 1950s, "The Ben Hecht Show," was produced in New York by a young Mike Wallace.On commutes to New York from home in Oceanside, California, Hecht sometimes stayed at the Algonquin, a haunt since his Round Table days of the 1920s. Seen under the Algonquin marquee to the right is the author of this web site. The Hechts maintained a second apartment in Central Park West, where he died on April 19, 1964.
Information about Hecht's work as a New York writer threads through through the Snickersnee Press publications about his life and works.
April 1943 was an intense month for Ben Hecht, touring his star-studded pageant We Will Never Die, about the slaughter of Jews in Europe. Curiously, few Americans knew at the time about what became known as the Holocaust and Hecht met with the hostility faced by the bearer of bad news. The prominent rabbi Stephen Wise did not feel Hecht was a qualified messenger and discredited his efforts so the play had to scramble for funds at every venue. Hecht, along with producer Billy Rose, personally picked up the tab for deficits. The pageant's initial staging was directed by Moss Hart at Madison Square Garden. It went on to play in Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago and Hollywood.
Among the performers in We Will Never Die were Paul Muni, Joan Leslie, Akim Tamiroff, Ralph Bellamy, Katrina Paxinou, John Garfield, Burgess Meredith, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, and Edward G Robinson. Kurt Weill wrote the musical score. With the arising of the Warsaw Ghetto in mid-April, Hecht added a dramatic scene to the pageant recreating that heroic struggle and engaging Franz Waxman to compose stirring music. Left is a scene from the Madison Square Garden production
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431 Fifth Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
fax: 202 547 0132
snickers
